Missionary in the Holy Land shares his
views on the conflict and urges United Methodists to seek the truth.
This is the first article in a series dealing
with the issue of violence in the Middle East. If you or a member of
your church has been personally touched by this conflict, please
e-mail your story to MWacht@flumc.org.
By Michael Wacht
BETHLEHEM, Palestine — Violence between
Israelis and Palestinians is not done in a vacuum and is not based on
religion, said the Rev. Alex Awad, a General Board of Global
Ministries (GBGM) missionary here.
“The conflict is over land,” Awad said. “It
is more political than religious. Muslims…Jews…Christians are not
fighting for their faith, they’re fighting for a piece of land. When
we fight for a piece of land, we use religion to rally people, to
excite people to build zeal among the people so they will help
accomplish a goal. Religion is used in the conflict, but it’s about
land. The Muslim is fighting the Jew because of what the Jew took by
force.”
Awad is a Palestinian Christian. He pastors a
church in Jerusalem and works with his brother, the Rev. Dr. Bishara
Awad, at the Bethlehem Bible College, a ministry supported through
GBGM’s Advance for Christ and His Church, special number 012017-5.
He said the violence in the Middle East is not
the root of the problem, but a symptom. The cause of the violence is
the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Golan Heights,
which began in 1967. The Palestinians want that land as a homeland,
Awad said.
“The Palestinians have been struggling since
the 1920s for a homeland,” he said. “They want to be on their own
land, they don’t want to take someone else’s land. They’re too
weak to dream of a homeland over all of historic Palestine. They’re
content to have 22 percent of the land…Gaza and the West Bank.”
Until the Palestinians get an independent state,
they will continue to resist the Israeli occupation, which Awad says
is “very cruel.”
“They [Israelis] make life miserable for
Palestinians,” he said. “We can’t move from town to town without
a hassle. Most people feel like they are in prison…prisoners in
their own towns.”
The humiliation that Palestinians have to endure
is what causes some people to become suicide bombers. “They decide
life is not worth living, and they waste their life in a suicide
bombing,” Awad said. “But it’s not wasting a life, because life
is not worth living.”
A vast majority of the more than 3 million
Palestinians condemn the bombings and killing of innocent people, Awad
said. “The Palestinians that do this to Israelis are fanatic
Muslims,” he said. “Even the majority of Muslims in Palestine do
not agree with that. Too many innocent people have died.”
Those innocent people are on both sides of the
conflict, according to Awad. “The Israelis are firing
indiscriminately from their F-16 jets, Apache helicopters and tanks,”
he said. “They’re killing children, men, old people. There’s a
lot of evil on both sides.”
The Christian community in Palestine also
suffers from the violence, Awad said. “Christians are not targeted
because we’re Christians; we’re targeted because we’re
Palestinians. The bombs…the bullets don’t distinguish between
Christians and Muslims.”
In the midst of the violence, Awad says the
Christian community finds reasons to rejoice. The last time Israeli
troops entered Bethlehem, the house of 18-year-old Michael Katimeh
suffered a direct hit by two missiles. The first-year Bethlehem Bible
College student was at home with his family when the missiles went
through the exterior wall and two interior walls of the house.
“You can put a watermelon through the holes,”
Awad said. “He and his family were inside the house, but by God’s
grace did not get killed and only received minor injuries. To see his
house and to know that those missiles went through the house, through
the room where he was, we just joined hands and praised God.”
Awad said the cycle of violence needs to end
before it escalates and affects the entire Middle East or the whole
world. He said American Christians can and should take an active role
in ending the violence.
“I would emphasize to the average American
Christian, to the average United Methodist, that you need to look
beyond the TV and the news media,” he said. “Go to books and the
Internet and learn from the other side what’s going on in the Holy
Land. Don’t be satisfied to listen to CNN because they don’t
express the day-to-day suffering of the Palestinian people.”
He also said Americans need to realize the role
the United States’ foreign policy plays in the Middle East. “American
bias toward Israel for 25 years has caused an escalation of mistrust
toward the Palestinians,” he said. “That bias does not help the
U.S. be a fair peace broker in the conflict between Israel and the
Arabs. You need to scream and shout to the politicians and tell them
to change the foreign policy.”
Awad also hopes the three major religions in the
area will learn to share Jerusalem, which is a holy city to
Christians, Jews and Muslims. “Jerusalem should not be political. It
should be open to all faiths,” Awad said, adding a committee made up
of members from the three faiths should govern the city.
“It should be open so all can worship the God
of Abraham in freedom,” he said. “If there is a willingness to
compromise, we can solve the problem of Jerusalem. Only the arrogance
of power says one group can have a monopoly over Jerusalem. That’s
the way it happened in the Middle Ages. This is not the Middle Ages;
it’s the 21st Century.” |
